20 October, 2014
A proprietor of the trade mark who knowingly watches his competitor grow in the market and takes no action can claim no exclusivity in his own trade mark. Bombay High Court by its order dated 7-10-2014, while holding so noted that against the defendant’s reply to the plaintiff’s first cease and desist notice wherein the defendant did not merely dispute the plaintiff’s content...

20 October, 2014
Delhi High Court has held that where the applicant of the patent application had responded to the first as well as the second examination report, the application cannot be stated to be abandoned. Relying on earlier ruling of the court in the case of Telefonaktiebolaget, it was held that application can be stated to be abandoned only in cases where the applicant fails and negl...

20 October, 2014
Examining whether the function of the Registrar of Trademarks while deciding on amendments to application for trademark is purely administrative or quasi-judicial, the High Court of Delhi held that powers vested in the Registrar by Section 22 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 were quasi-judicial. The court therefore struck down Clause No. 3 of the Office Order No.16 of 2012-2013 d...

5 September, 2014
Exception for use of copyrighted material in parody is the flavour of the season in UK. Since the recommendation in Hargreaves review in 2011, statutory protection for use in parody has been taken up and is likely to come into effect later this year. What is parody and when does it cease to be fair use are intriguing questions and could yield as many answers are there are fa...

5 September, 2014
Novelty in design and novelty in arguments don’t always translate into the desired results in the IP world. Fresh from very engrossing Kiddie trunk cases, the UK High Court [(2014) EWHC 2845 (IPEC)] recently examined buoyant flying toys shaped like fish. Both parties devised and sold toys. The defendant sought to prove that the claimant’s patents were invalid. The particular...

22 August, 2014
Assignment of trademark should be registered within a reasonable period and if the trademark is not so registered before dissolution of the assignor company, the mark is deemed to have been removed or rectified from the Registry of Trademarks. Holding thus, while allowing the rectification application in respect of mark US PRO, the Intellectual Property Appellate Board, placin...

22 August, 2014
The Indian Patent Office released the ‘Revised Draft Guidelines for Examination of Patent Applications in the Field of Pharmaceuticals’ on 12th August, 2014. Comments and suggestions can be sent before 2nd September, 2014. The draft guidelines discuss the approach to determine ‘invention’, ‘inventive step’ and ‘industrial application’ besides Section 3 on non-patentable invent...

22 August, 2014
Allahabad High Court has quashed the order granting injunction restraining the defendants-appellants (Apex Laboratories Pvt. Ltd.) from using the “green dot” on the label of the packaging of its product “Zincovit Syrup”. The court in this regard held that green dot inside a square outlined by green colour is a symbol for which copyright cannot be claimed by anybody as the symb...

28 July, 2014
The Bombay High Court on 26-6-2014 has held that only a society registered under Section 33(3) of the Copyright Act, 1957 (amended in 1994), can carry on the business of issuing and granting licenses. The plaintiffs (Leopold Café) had been served notices in respect of certain ‘public performance’ of copyrighted material by the defendant (Novex Communications).
The plaintiffs...

28 July, 2014
The US Supreme Court on 25-6-2014 held that in enabling subscribers to view broadcast of copyrighted content, using individual antennae, both elements of ’performance’ and ‘public’ were satisfied and such activity amounted to infringement. In the instant case (American Broadcasting Companies v. AEREO), the defendant transmitted content by means of individual antenna to subscrib...

28 July, 2014
The Bombay High Court on 15-7-2014 has upheld the decision of the Controller and IPAB to grant compulsory licence (CL) for a cancer drug. The court in this regard, considering the TRIPS Agreement, Doha Declaration and various provisions of the Patent Act, 1970, rejected the writ petition filed by the patent holder (Bayer Corporation). Submission that efforts to obtain voluntary ...

20 June, 2014
Reasoning that protection under patent laws is for a set of claimed elements, the Supreme Court of USA has on 2-6-2014 held that when there is no direct infringement, a person cannot be liable for inducing infringement. Also, a method patent is not infringed unless all the steps are carried out. Several steps in the process of delivering electronic data through Content Delivery...